Review (GER/EN): Mika, Frankfurt

Wo/Where: Berger Straße 61, Frankfurt

Letzter Besuch/last visit: 6. Jan.

English version below!

Es gibt Läden in denen man sich einfach wohl fühlt. Das Mika ist so einer von diesen. Der Besitzer ist nett, die Atmosphäre ist nett. Das Essen ist manchmal gut und manchmal nicht. Nicht gut bedeutet hier in keinem Fall ein Mangel an Qualität welcher zur Ungenießbarkeit führt, sondern einfach ein Mangel an Finesse.

So auch heute Abend. Wir bestellen gegrillten Pulpo mit Schmorgemüse und ein Steinpilzrisotto. 

 

 

Der Pulpo ist von guter Qualität, sehr gut zubereitet und somit schön zart. Während man dem Pulpo noch selbst mit Salz nachhelfen kann, funktioniert das beim Risotto gar nicht. Es schmeckt nach nichts. Weder die Brühe oder die sonstigen Zutaten mit denen der Risotto angesetzt worden ist, scheinen irgendein Aroma gehabt zu haben. Die Steinpilze sind gut und werden so rausgepickt und verspeist.

Ich werde trotzdem irgendwann wieder einkehren. Manchmal will man es einfach planbar gemütlich und unkompliziert. Das Frühstück hier ist übrigens durchgehend gut.

English:

There are venues that are just cozy and although the taste of the food is sometimes volatile, you just go there because the people, in this case especially the Greek owner, are nice. To be clear: the food here is never bad but sometimes lacks that certain something preventing it to be more than decent. 

That is the case today: we order grilled pulpo with vegetables and a risotto with porcini.

 

The pulpo is of good quality and is well prepared which makes it really tender. As often in Germany, restaurants believe salt is something to put on a table but not in a dish. Unfortunately salt cannot do anything to the risotto. It just has no taste. I guess the broth and other ingredients used to cook it had no flavor or intensity. The porcini are good so we pick them out separately.

I know that I will still come back once in a while because it is cozy. By the way, breakfast here is always good.

Starstruck: Review Restaurant Martin Berasategui - San Sebastian, Spain

I recently - ex post - found out that I have been to a one starred Michelin restaurant before (Yauatcha, London in 2009), but all I remember is that it was delicious but I probably was not in the mindset and certainly less aware to thoroughly focus on each dish and its compositon.

Fast forward to the beginning of October 2016:

I always wanted to feast myself through San Sebastian since it is often described as one of the culinary hotspots in the world. It shouldn't come as a surprise considering the heavy influence of Spanish and French cuisine.

Thanks to the well known Julien Walther, whose blog (in German) is a must read if you want to combine your travel with great gustatory perceptions (or just to have a great read), I luckily managed to skip my first as well as the most obvious and popular choices in that region (Arzak and Azurmendi to name a few). Reading his reviews of those restaurants seemed to fulfill most of the prejudices people with limited (that includes me) experiences have towards such venues: stiff, over the top, theatrical, pretentious and often bereft of any resemblance to the original product (dry ice, lyophilisation anyone?).

So I, with a wallet that cannot be as frequently opened for such ventures, was the grateful beneficiary of his endeavor.  

So six weeks before our departure I managed to have areservation at the Restaurant Martin Berasategui for lunch on Friday, October 7th. The restaurant, that received its third star in 2001, is located in Lasarte-oria, 10km southwest of San Sebastian.

The menu is straightforward with starters coming for 44 €, the main dishes for 71 € and the desserts for 32 €. So you are not forced to opt for a 15+ courses degustation menu although you can (€ 220/20 courses). Something even I noticed: Bottles of wine are, as common in Spain, reasonably priced compared to the UK or France. We had a great white wine (bottle 55 €) but I have to make my initial excitement culpable for not having taken a photo of the bottle or having remembered its name.

We are served some fresh homemade sour dough bread with different sorts of butter (beetroot, salted, spinach, stone mushroom). Delicious!

The first pleasant surprise: As we intended to order more food than we could probably eat since we wanted to taste as much as possible, the staff recommended to serve us half – portions of the dishes we would like to taste as their portions are quite large. Why would we dissent?

The first amuse-bouche is Mille-feuille of smoked eel, foie-gras, spring onions and green apple.

The Mille-feuille, typically a sweet, multi-layered pastry, is served here with a slightly crunchy, caramelized layer on the top and with a subtle and smooth foie-gras layer at the bottom with the smoked eel in between. This is accompanied by a light spring-onion cream. Well, this was about the point where my company and I nearly stopped talking to each other for the next 3,5 hours.

The Mille-feuille is followed by Red Shrimp Royale and dill with Venta del Barón oil.

It is an excellent composition, very light but still intense and if you really slurp it you can taste excellent olive oil. Venta del Baron (from Cordoba) is supposed to be the best olive oil in the world and although I am not too knowledgeable about olive oils - you can taste it. Or is it just because the menu says so? We’ll never find out but that’s what happens if you are really involved.

For the next three courses we simply followed the aforementioned blog with one additional meal I really wanted to taste. This strategy proved to be fatal – in a positive way but more on that later!

So as a starter it has to the Iberian Ham “Capa Negra”. At least regarding ham I can say that I have tasted a lot with varying experiences. This one though (we learn from the subtle, yet attentive and very funny staff is Berasategui’s self-produced ham) is of another class altogether. Served with roasted, olive oil and tomato marinated white bread it just melts in your mouth and leaves a great nutty flavor as a reminder. We agree that it is highly improbable that we will be eating ham again anytime soon.

Then, as per script, the Grilled sirloin «Luismi» over a bed of Swiss chard chlorophyll and cheese bonbon reaches our table. Luismi, based in Galicia, is Senor Berasategui’s preferred high quality butcher and both of us agree that this piece of meat puts everything we had in the past to utter shame. Smokey, buttery and nutty and excellently flanked by Swiss chard and cheese bonbons that softly explode in your mouth revealing warm, liquid cheese.

 

Out of curiosity we had ordered “Young pigeon, charcoal roasted at a low temperature with potato and truffle bites and forgotten vegetables” as well.

I never had pigeon and therefore lack a reference for comparison but this dish was a revelation as on how to combine basic ingredients in such a way to culminate into fantastic and homogenous dish. The pigeon is heated in the oven for six minutes and then roasted on charcoal for a few moments. The meat was very tender and according me, also due the lack of ample words, tasted a bit sourer (or fleshier?) than other sorts of meat I had. Add to that one of those truffle bites and one of those cereal-wheat crackers in your mouth and you have slightly sweet and crunchy bite.

 

We ask for a coffee break as we are quiet full. We bring forward that we would very much fancy a walk outside in the garden. “Don’t ask please, this is your home. Feel at home!” And we do feel at home.

Thirty minutes later we are ready for our dessert which is… an apple pie! Ok, an apple pie filled with a Granny Smith sorbet and an Armagnac cream but still: an apple pie!

This is another example on how to prepare a simple dish with excellent products (apple, the butter used for the dough..) The dough, so it seems like at least, has infinite layers and has the right crack-crisp-to-vanish – in – your – mouth – ratio.

The meal is rounded off with a selction of sweets. I can imagine they were all excellent but I am not the greatest fan of plain chocolate and since my organism and brain literally went into digestion mode, I was probably incapable of reflecting any further.

I mentioned earlier that our choice proved to be fatal. Of course this is quiet exaggerated but here is what I mean: We basically, as you can see on the pictures, ordered dishes that do not seem hard to replicate at home. You can buy ham, sirloin, vegetables and ingredients for an apple pie. But neither - first and foremost - do we have the skills Senor Berasategui and his staff possess nor do we have easy access to such premium quality products. Had we opted for a restaurant that served dishes (again extensive use of dry ice, lyophilisation of "you name it") creating an immense visual (and perhaps gustatory) gap between product, presentation and composition we might have not felt that way. Of course it is hard now to select ham, meat or any other ingredient but at least in my case it lead to a further decrease of meat consumption and we remain thankful to have enjoyed dishes which seemed (looked) familiar but tasted excellent due to skills of preparation and the use of products with extaordinary quality. 

Starstruck part II: Elkano - as close as it gets!

Getaria, a small town between San Sebastian and Bilbao, is home to the popular one star restaurant Elkano. Apart from serving a huge variety of seafood, their signature dish remains the turbot. Caught in the morning and served for lunch or dinner.

To start our lunch we order a small portion of lobster and kokotxas (a Basque speciality; the fleshy underpart of a hake fish’s jaw) since that will be followed by a 1.3 kg turbot (73€ per kilo).  The amuse bouche is a slightly fried piece of excellent tuna. The garlic-lemon marinated lobster is of excellent quality. This is, by the very nature of the restaurant, the closest you can get to the origin of the product by adding few good ingredients to enhance the experience.

 Now the kokotxas: We never had kokotxas and now are being served three types of them with the style of preparation being the sole difference. The first one is slightly fried with egg yolk; the second is slightly cooked as is the third one which comes marinated in pil-pil sauce (olive oil, garlic and parsley). I loved the taste. It tastes very fishy with a blend of mussles.

And then it comes, the turbot. Presented to us in its full beauty and then each part is carefully prepared for us to eat. We are explained to pay attention to the difference in taste between the bottom of side of the fish which is not exposed to sunlight (fattier and softer) and the top which is continuously exposed to it (more rawboned). The side parts can be eaten like spare ribs and, if that is the correct term, tastes more like meat (chicken) than fish. 

What can we say? High on proteins (and white wine) we are pondering about an unique experience. Products of a quality that is improbable to exceed and which are not suffocated by any distracting side dishes. I once had turbot in Germany...now I get the joke! 

Tapas: Espanita

last visit: 17.11.2011
where: Hainer Weg. 9, Frankfurt
Phone: 069/69 59 96 69

We heard that there is a good place for tapas on the other side of the Main river. Although we are addicted to the Casa Pintor when it comes to Tapas and some selected Spanish dishes we wonder if the Esapnite might be an alternative. The Espanita is relatively small with about 10 - 12 tables and thanks to the warm reception by - thats what we guess - the owner we immediately feeld comfortable here.

What is suprising is that we find dishes like Fideua (paella with small wheat noodles), black paella, lentils and chickpeas dishes and croquettes on the menu and we think that this is quiet a good representation of Catalonian and Andalusian cuisine.

We select the red vino de la casa and from the tapas frias (cold tapas) we opt for the chickpeas with tuna (€ 4.50). The warm dishes consist of Spanish-style lentils (€ 6.80), Croquetas mixtas (croquettes filled with cheese, jamon etc - € 7.00), Mejillones (mussels with white wine - € 8.50) and of course Gambas al ajillo (shrimp in garlic - € 7.50). Since we unfortunately forgot to take the check home prices may differ but not more than 20 - 30 cents per dish.

The Croquetas are quiet good but we are not really able to distinguish the different fillings. The prawns are very good since they are big and juicy but due to the gravy they are definitely second to the one Casa Pintor serves.

Apart from that we are definitely excited: The Spanish-style lentils are deliciously seasoned and we are happy to find slices of Spanish chorizo in there (​​sausage with peppers and garlic).

The chickpeas-tuna salad is the first meal to dissapear from our table. It is very fresh and we feel we could eat tons of it without getting tired. The yummy white wine gravy in which the mussles are soaked in also vanishes quiet fast with the aid of the buns that complements our dish.

There is much choice on the menu that we feel a bit sad not being able to fill our satisfied stomachs anymore but on the other hand that is good reason to come back here. And we will definitely since we think this is a pretty good alternative to the Casa Pintor offering tasty dishes the latter simply does not offer. And this place seems a bit more intimate which might be good depending on your mood. Variety is the spice of life, isn't it?

We pay just about 35 € ( two people, without drinks) and gratefully drink the free digestif that is served!
Man they even have Churros....(fried-dough pastry that is dipped in hot chocolate)

Gracias!

Chickpea-Tuna

Croquetas

Mussels in white wine sauce

Oriental: Mamoona Cuisine (English review)

last visited: 11.11.2011
where: Hanauer Ldstr. 2, Frankfurt
phone: 069/17427597

Read this in German / Auf Deutsch lesen

It is indeed amazing what Ghani has made out of the former and legendary Unity club. He has already proven his creativity by transforming a small public toilet at the city center into a nice and cozy bar named Lala Mamoona and here he surpasses himself and excites us: Chic and bright, all in pastel colors and decorated with style. Emphasis is put on details with the leather wrapped menu describing vital ingredients of the Moroccan and Lebanese cuisine being only one proof for that. The staff is very friendly without being too intrusive or acting artificially. Starting with the bartender whom you will meet first when you enter to the rest of the staff - the way they treat you is very consistent.

As an appetizer we choose okra (lady`s fingers) in tomato sauce and oriental spices (€ 5.50) and falafel with haloumi cheese (€ 6.80).

The okras are fresh and well coated in a spicey and well-flavored tomato sauce. I'm not a big falafel fan and probably never will end up as one but here they definitely taste different from what you get at most of the take aways. It seems as if they frequently change the oil they use to fry. The haloumi is perfectly grilled as it is not hard to chew (folks who tried them at home will know what I mean) and goes very well with the chickpea sauce.

We feel that 30 minutes is a tad too long to wait for the main course but on the other hand we don't really know how long it takes to prepare a lamb roll (lamb in oriental bread, hummus and wild herb salad - € 10.50) or a chicken tajine (chicken stew, pickled lemon, olives, onions and saffron rice  - € 15.50). Saying "it was worth the wait" may sound clichéd but they deliver! The same lamb role could be served at the IMA Multibar: The size is rather big and in combination with the hummus filling occupies some place in your stomach. The lamb is tender and according to its taste the meat seems to come from a young animal indeed.

The eye catcher here is definitly the chicken tajine served in a clay pot in a straw basket. The chicken is incredibly tender and the lemon-olive-onion gravy is completely eaten up with the support of the saffron rice.

When paying (€ 40 for two, excluding drinks) the staff informs us that there is buffet every Sunday containing most of the dishes they server with some live music starting at 6 pm. We'll definitely go for that....

Okra

Falafel & Haloumi chees

Lamb roll

Chicken Tajine

IMA Multibar

last visit: 21.10.2011
Where: Kleine Bockenheimer Straße 14, Frankfurt
Auf Deutsch lesen / Read this in German
Why strive to the city center of Frankfurt when you have a variety of choices to dine around my place in Bornheim? Sure, the "Heimat" on the Berliner Strasse is definitely worth a visit but most wallets wouldn't sustain regular visits. I'll try to explore that part of the town better in the future. As fate would have it my co-worker goes back to the US for a rather long period and since the hotel he is staying at to catch his early flight next day is quiet close to the Freßgass (a famous pedestrian area with rather sophisticated bars and restaurants and of course a McDonald's) and my research as well as me recalling some recomendations I thought to try out IMA Multibar for a small and informal farewell dinner.

I had booked a table for three people in the afternoon and if this Friday is a benchmark it is definitely recommended to do so. The interior is designed minimalistically without coming across too cold.

The place is pretty dense and I guess it might be quiet crowded during lunchtime but that is nothing that bothers me nor influences my review. You can easily check in advance if a place is convenient for a certain purpose and what ambience you can expect. I mean you wouldn't go to McDonald's for a candlelight dinner or expect a drive through at Jamie Oliver's place.

Corresponding to the set-up the menu is kept simple which on one hand - supported by the sight of the open kitchen - hopefully indicates that this place offers few but delicious choices but it definitely saves me time translating everything to my colleague.

On the menu we find various kinds of wraps, various oriental appetizers, a freestyle platter (with hummus, guacamole or freestyle addition couscous, potato-chickpea puree), baked potatoes and salads. These dishes can be enhanced with plenty of extras like vegetables, beef, chicken, smoked duck breast, fried goat cheese and many more.

We select a large freestyle platter (€8), a small salad with beef (€4,50 + €3), a wrap with smoked duck breast salad, pineapple - mango - mint chutney, sour cream and balsamic dressing and one with Tiger prawns, salad, potato-chickpea puree, homemade chili-vanilla jelly, yogurt - wasabi dressing and Asian dressing (€ 8.50 / € 9). The friendly waitress recommends a rasperry-I-forgot-the-other-ingredients-dressing for the salad and we decide to go for it.

Being located in this area of the town and with every dish coming for less than € 10 we fear to be served with tiny portions good for a picture in a sophisticated restaurant guide but not sufficient to fill our stomachs. Luckily that's not the case: The wraps are big enough to be tried by each one of us and each one of us agrees: Delicious, fresh and healthy! The many sauces, relishes and chutneys in that thin pita bread are perfectly complementing the duck breast/tiger prawns being a non-dominating but very important support act. The small salad is fresh and teaming up with the beef it becomes a quiet a portion delicately coated in that rasperry-I-forgot-the-other-ingredients-dressing. The freestyle platter can give any other dedicated oriental restaurant a run for their money and is not only eaten up in no time but we also leave the platter brightly polished using the bread that came along with it.

I am getting a watery mouth just writing about it. € 32.50 (excluding drinks) - good value for money - go for it!

Small salad with beef and rasperry dressing

Freestyle oriental platter

Wrap with smoked duck breast

Picture perfect? Paparazzi

last visited: Oct 17th 2011
Where: Seckbacher Landstraße 48, 60389 Frankfurt
Info: www.paparazzi-ffm.de, Phone: 069 68 97 73 40, open daily from 5pm to 11pm
Read this in German / Auf Deutsch lesen
If a place is trying to woo me with home-made noodles chances are high that I give in. That is what is happening on this very Monday and since Mondays are definitely not the busiest days for restaurants we find a place for two instantly. It is quiet evident that the name of this restaurant does not originate from a very subtle idea: Dozens of celebrities are greeting us from the pictures hanging on the walls. We decide to share a pizza and a pasta dish although the rich variety displayed on the menu is giving us a hard time to chose anything and the delicious description of each item does not simplify the decision making process at all. While drinking our Pinot Grigio (for a very reasonable € 9.80/0.5l), we decide order a Pizza Stallone (€ 8 with spinach, ricotta and Parma ham) and homemade black tagliolini with fried scampi and lobster sauce (€ 13.50).

Within 15 minutes we are served with a steaming hot pizza and wonderful looking pasta which is definitely the eyecatcher among the two because instead on a plate it is servedt on a crispy and fluffy dough.

The pizza is topped with fresh tomatoes, spinach and prosciutto and is really good. I'd sound more enthusiastic about it if the pasta was not the undisputed show stopper: The noodles are really al dente and the prawns are well cooked and seasoned having us envy them for their place in that delicious and creamy lobster sauce. Perhaps a more hearty and spicey pizza would have gone down better with that mild and creamy pasta sauce. I help myself by pouring all the chili peppers the waiter has warned me from over my half of the pizza leaving the staff and my pal wondering whether my tongue is numb.

We feel taken care of very well by the friendly and joyous staff asking us regularly if we were fine and we definitely are - or perhaps not - because we have definitely gone crazy over that fluffy dough that has soaked in all the lobster sauce by now.

For an unbeatable € 25 (excluding drinks) we leave that charming place that will definitely woo us back again.

Pizza Stallone

Black tagliolini with fried scampi and lobster sauce

Revisited: Restaurant No. 16 - Luigi & Luana

Rezension meines ersten Besuchs vom Mai 2011 - Review of my first visit from May 2011


last visited: October 14th 2011
Where: Wiesenstraße 52, 60385 Frankfurt am Main
Info: Tel: 069 46 45 91

It was about time again. As it is getting bone chillingly cold why not have dinner at a cozy and familiar place. A good friend from the south of Germany is here for a visit and since I have been raving about this restaurant for years the place of my choice is quiet clear. I dared to call them and book a seat only one day in advance so was not surprised by their reply: "We are fully booked, just come over and try"

Well, here we are. Around 9.15 pm we enter a fully packed restaurant meeting other hungry companions waiting for a table. We kill the 45 minutes with a glass of red vino de la casa filled to the brim at the bar and finally take a seat close to it wondering how the large portions of food will fit on that narrow table. Of course I order the dishes I already tried here before in order not to disappoint my friend. We choose the Salad Murisceddu (comes with Tuna and vinegar - pepper - onion dressing) and the Tria combinazioni (pasta, vegetables and lamb loins).

Just my friend's expression when seeing those large portions arriving at our table is worth the visit. And that is only surpassed by the sounds he is making while tasting the food. Since my friend does not eat any pork we asked for a Spaghetti Pesto along the Tria Combinazioni instead of the Spaghetti de la casa with meat sauce and what can we say: This place without any exceptions is continuously delivering high quality having us ask ourselves how each bite outdoes the previous one.

The pesto, too often smothered in cream and served with cheap oil at other places, is a showstopper. Right at the first glance you can see and taste the fresh basil, the real pecorino cheese and high quality olive oil.

We absolutely long for a dessert but are torn between Tiramisu, chocolate mousse and Panacotta. We opt for tiramisu to take away since we need a walk home for sure before anything else goes down our throats. It turns out that my idea of ​​reserving the tiramisu while having our meals would have proven beneficial to us: "Tiramisu and chocolate mousse sold out" we are told.

We take the boxed Panacotta with fruit sauce, pay € 60 (excl.drinks) for a meal which could have served one more friend, drink the free Ramazotti that was offered to us and rush back home to put the Panacotta in the refrigerator. Let me tell you that you won't regret a single pound you gain while eating it..it is just so yummy.

"This is the best Italian food I've eaten outside," says my pal. I am expecting more frequent visits from the south now...

Review: Restaurant No.16 - Luigi & Luana

Rezension meines zweiten Besuchs vom Oktober 2011 - Review of my second visit from Oct 2011


last visited: end of May 2011
Where: Wiesenstraße 52, 60385 Frankfurt am Main
Info: Tel: 069 46 45 91
Now this is a cozy place if you want to spend a long evening dining and chatting and not to forget: If you have plenty of space in your stomach to be filled with some delicious and genuine pasta and meat dishes. Make sure to call well in advance to book a table or just try your luck and spend your time at the bar with a glass of wine waiting to be seated. You will soon forget that you entered a place in the heart of Germany's financial metropolis as you will be taken back into time: Pictures from Sardinia, the Italian island the owners of this 20+ years restaurant are coming from, gazillions of bottles and stuffed animals greet you from the walls.

A pigling is probably the last thing you would want to be in Sardinia since chances are high that you end up as a dish landing on a plate surrounded by Spaghetti in savoury homemade meat sauce and vegetables named as Spaghetti Number 16 (21 €). If you are taken aback by the price now - just believe me: Though 21 € are more than reasonable for the quality served that portion can actually fill 3 people while the menu already states that it suffices for 2!

Add a bit of grated goat cheese - asking for Parmesan, Coke, Sprite and other products alien to Sardinia will only cause the staff to throw a pitying smile at you - and start the feast.

Should anyone crave for meat, let me tell you that the selection is plentiful. I highly recommend the Tria Combinazioni: 2 lamb loins, so tender and juicy they nearly slice themselves voluntarily, with vegetables and pasta with meat sauce de la casa! (€ 28). Needless to say that it takes more than two people to finish that up especially since it is worth to try more than one dish like we are by starting it all with a Salad Murisceddu (15 €) seasoned with a wonderful pepper onion dressing and tuna.

If you like to accompany your meal with wine the choice is made easy for you: There is one red and one white wine - their vino de la casa - and they fill your glass to the brim making it impossible to lift your glass for a "Cheers!".

While observing the friendly and attentive staff (and you can clearly tell by their looks they are a family), we wonder if there is still space for a dessert. There is! Luckily not all of the Tiramisu placed in that transparent refrigerator close to the bar are already reserved. To be sure to get one of these delicious rum and mascarpone soaked sins do as the others do and ask the staff to put one on hold for you while having your main course.
We ask for the check with the little amount of breath we still possess for the rest was taken away by the quality, taste and the sheer size of the dishes. Off the cuff and breathtakingly fast Vincenzo, who eats here every day, lists what we had and prepares the check not forgetting to offer us a free digestive: "Grappa, Ramazzotti, Espresso?" We conclude dinner with a Ramazotti, pay € 50 (excluding drinks), what we think is a pretty good deal, and look forward to a long walk to embrace the nightlife.